Nobuyoshi Araki - The Past - 1993

The Past

Nobuyoshi Araki
Byakuya Shobō/1993/Japanese/210*295*18

The globally acclaimed photographer Nobuyoshi Araki, representing Japan, presents his photobook ‘Past’. As noted in the afterword, this book originated from negatives titled ‘My Tokyo’ discovered in a storage room during preparations for the 1993 exhibition ‘Love You Tokyo’ at the Setagaya Art Museum, held with photographer Koshio Kuwahara (another set of negatives found at that time, titled ‘Postwar’, also became a photobook). The cover features actress and writer Izumi Suzuki, known for appearing in Araki's other photobooks. The monochrome photographs were taken during the year from September 1973 to August 1974, shortly after Araki left his job at Dentsu during his apprenticeship as a photographer. The color photographs were taken in August 1993. The collection includes snapshots of “Tokyo” and female nudes. “I'd long wanted to publish a photo book titled ‘Past,’ so I decided to change the title to 〈Past〉 and release it. I felt like printing new copies of this one, so this summer I ended up printing 789 copies in 4x5 format. I added some EPL color prints taken with a Nikon Mini using a 28mm lens as a bonus and handed it over to Mr. SUEI Akira” (from the book).